


What help is ours if hope like yours be none

by B29



Series: The Bay Quartet [2]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: And to Alexander Pope’s translation of the Odyssey, Attempts to teach Jake Peralta the Telemachy, Brief discussion of the HIV/AIDS crisis, Episode: s05e12 Safe House, Gen, Please be aware that this work contains references to Jake Peralta's culinary choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:48:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27226063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/B29/pseuds/B29
Summary: There is a painting of a rock on the wall of Jake Peralta’s flat.
Relationships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago, Kevin Cozner & Jake Peralta, Kevin Cozner/Raymond Holt
Series: The Bay Quartet [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1987693
Comments: 12
Kudos: 102





	What help is ours if hope like yours be none

There is a painting of a rock on the wall of Jake Peralta’s flat. 

It is, of course, technically Amy Santiago’s flat– her name is the one on the lease– and of course, technically Kevin has never visited. But they’ve both talked so much about _home_ that he feels he knows the place completely through Peralta’s eyes.

He probably wouldn’t recognise Detective Santiago’s description of it.

At any rate, the painting on the wall is Jake’s– Raymond’s painting, Jake’s painting, Raymond would probably have made a lovely little joke about the difficulty of getting English to distinguish between creator and possessor– and Kevin had almost forgotten about Rock No. 63 until Jake had been standing in the Permissible Standing Square one day, staring at the insipid rural watercolour over the mantel, and said rather forlornly, _This is cute, but I miss the rock_.

It had been a measure of Kevin’s cultural atrophy that he had initially taken it to be a reference to Dwayne Douglas Johnson.

***

“You _hung_ it?” Kevin asked, completely wrong-footed. “Where?”  
  
“The wall,” said Jake, and then, with a slight pout, “Amy said propping things up on shelves was _juvenile_.”  
  
“Detective Santiago is correct,” said Kevin, as sternly as possible. “Was she the one to hang it?”

“I _wish_ ,” Jake said. “She’s the one who actually knows how to use a power drill. But apparently it was–” to Kevin’s faint bewilderment, he crooked two fingers from each hand in the air– “ _a_ _learning opportunity, Jake._ ”

Kevin considered this.

“Your impression of your fiancée is actually startlingly accurate.” 

Jake beamed, slithering over to lie against the couch next to Kevin. “Thanks, but you should hear Rosa’s.”

“That sounds terrifying.”  
  
“It is.”

***

“You never told me,” Kevin said in the kitchen the next morning, just before they had to open the curtains, “where Rock No. 63 is hung.”

Jake grinned.

“Ames,” he said, dropping his voice to a faux-scandalised whisper, “wanted to hang it in the _bedroom_.”

“She did _not_.”  
  
“Cross my heart. She said it was appropriate and respectful and complemented the colour scheme and _I_ said I loved you too much to indulge her weird Captain Holt kinks.”

By the time he had recovered from _that_ , Jake had been microwaving something that claimed to be cladistically adjacent to pizza, and Kevin had had no choice but to leave the kitchen.

***

“So once you’d reasoned Detective Santiago out of…” Kevin’s brain stuttered momentarily, “her preferred placement, where _did_ you hang Raymond’s painting?”

“My painting,” said Jake through a mouthful of strawberry laces. “You gave it to me.”  
  
“Raymond’s painting. He painted it.”

“If it’s Dad’s painting, how come it’s on _my_ wall?”

“Raym- do you call him that to annoy me?”  
  
“What, ‘dad’? Is it working?”

Kevin considered it for a moment.

“No. It’s strange, but not inappropriate.”

“Damn,” said Jake, opening a packet of gummy bears. “Well, now I have to confess that I call him that because I genuinely super admire him and consider him the main male role model in my life and want to earn his approval and also his affection.” He shoved a handful of the sweets into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “That was _super_ devious of you, Kevin.”  
  
“It was honest.”

“You are generally super devious, actually. All that stuff about the New Yorker article when we first met. That time you called Gina ‘Miss Linetti’ to let her know she’d disappointed you.” Jake examined his rather sticky hand, and then Kevin. “Have you considered being, like, a supervillain? Or,” he continued, eyes brightening, “a _crime boss_. Captain Holt would _never_ suspect you, perfect cover!”

Kevin considers it.

“I am good at math,” he admits. 

“Is that important?”

“To a high-level orchestrator of organised crime? Control the finances, control the empire, Jake.”  
  
“Cool. Actually, you _do_ make that sound cool. You’re gonna be such an awesome supervillain.”

“In this hypothetical, are you aware of my activities and conspiring with me to hide my criminal empire from Raymond?”

“Why?” asked Jake, straightening up a bit with one sticky hand on the sofa cushion. Kevin winced.  
  
“Because, as much as I hate to say it, I think the enterprise would fall apart very quickly without your participation.”

Jake’s eyes had started to glow unnervingly, and his smile was far too wide.

“Yeah? And if I helped you?”

“The deception could conceivably,” Kevin gritted out, “with your assistance, be perpetuated for many years.”

Jake punched the air with both fists.

“We’re a great team! You just basically said so!”  
  
“Peralta, your hands were just visible from the street. Calm down.”  
  
“Don’t you _Peralta_ me, Kev, you're the one who just admitted that we would be an awesome mob boss duo.”

***

“Are you avoiding the question?” Kevin asked him the next evening. Jake blinked up at him for a few moments.

“Oh, right! That. Yeah, I totally am.”  
  
“Why?”

Peralta looked over at the sickly watercolour and pulled a face.

“I dunno. I guess… I really like that painting. Like I actually do.” His voice grew strangely vulnerable. “And I like it because it makes me laugh, but also because it’s Captain Holt’s, but _also_ because you gave it to me, and that feels weird when you, y’know. Don’t even like me.”

“You sincerely believe Raymond doesn’t like you?”  
  
“What? No,” Jake shrugged the ridiculous suggestion off with the lack of concern it merited. “He’s basically put me in charge of keeping _you_ safe. He definitely likes me, like, a lot.”  
  
“Because he’s locked you away from your partner and from the world for an indefinite, but lengthy, period of time?” 

That had come out a little more bitterly than he’d expected.  
  
“Yeah,” said Jake. “I mean, because he locked me away with _you_. I think that’s basically Holt’s idea of heaven.”

Despite all the bored, miserable, frustrated thoughts of the last few weeks, Kevin couldn’t help but smile. He’d wondered more than a few times – when he’d received Sergeant Jeffords’ painting, and when Detective Santiago had been so eager to hear how they’d met– what _exactly_ Raymond said when he talked to his colleagues about him.

From the way Peralta talked, he could only assume that it was unerringly affectionate.

“But you believe that _I_ don’t like you,” he continued, and Jake blew out a long breath, looking unhappy.

“Kevin, I know all the stuff you like. None of it is _anything_ like me. And that’s ok, it’s not your fault or anything, some people are just gonna… not like me. That’s fine. It’s cool. Really.”

Kevin considered this.

“You don’t have any Latin,” he decided slowly. “Or Hebrew. Or–”  
  
“Yeah, exactly.”  
  
“No, I mean– you know _what_ I like. But you don’t know anything _about_ what I like. You’ve never even read _Homer_.”  
  
“See, I feel like that ‘even’ was–”  
  
“Jake,” said Kevin. “I like you.”

Jake looked like he’d been punched in the throat. 

“Ok.”

“Jake. Are you crying?”  
  
“... _you’re_ crying.”

“I’m really not.”

***

“And then,” said Kevin, “Athena turns up.”  
  
“Wait,” said Jake, flinging his arms out. Kevin could only just see them over the armchair he was lying behind. “Wait. Who’s that? Have we met Athena yet?”  
  
“She’s a god,” said Kevin with enormous patience.  
  
“Cool,” said Jake, “Cool cool cool cool cool.” He was eating something directly from a packet. It kept rustling. Kevin had decided against inquiring further.

“So she disguises herself–”

“ _Awesome_. Good disguise?”  
  
“Great disguise.”

“With a voice?”

“Oh yes. And she... trash-talks him.”  
  
“Kevin,” said Jake, in an awed whisper, “you have _no idea_ how proud I am right now.”

“She tells him,” Kevin persevered, “that _few sons indeed are like their fathers, most are worse, and few better_.”

“You were quoting someone there,” said Jake, sitting up to peer suspiciously at him over the armchair. “That was your Quoting Someone voice.”

“I deserve to quote seminal translations occasionally. Especially if it’s only Samuel Butler.”

“Even his name sounds boring.” Jake flopped back down onto the floor again in apparent disappointment.  
  
“If you say so. _But since thy veins paternal virtue fires | And all Penelope thy soul inspires | Go, and succeed._ ”

“That’s not Samuel Butler. That was kinda cool.” Oh, Kevin was going to regret this so much if Jake decided he liked Pope. “Wait, Penelope’s his mum, right?”

“Yes.”

“So that’s you,” said Jake thoughtfully, and the world stopped.

“I’m sorry?”  
  
“That’s why you’re telling me this, right? Like Captain Holt is my dad, Odysseus, right, and I’m getting trash talked by the voice in my head that’s like– _Jake, you’ll never be as cool as your dad, Captain Holt_ – and you’re Penelope because I gotta keep you safe and persuade you not to give up on him and because you’re _crazy supervillain devious_. Like pick-apart-the-weaving devious. Do you think Penelope would’ve been a good crime boss too?”

Kevin considered it.

“Not really. And that’s not why I’m doing this. I didn’t know you were aware that we– that I was–”

Jake shrugged. Kevin couldn't see it, but he could hear the scuff of Jake's jacket against the carpeting.

“I just know what it looks like," he said, "when an adult is thinking about getting a divorce.”

It sounded terribly sad. Probably sadder than Jake had intended. Kevin heard a slight sniff from behind the armchair, and thought perhaps he might be crying again.

“Jake?”

“Uh,” Jake sat up and shuffled around to face him. “Yeah?” His eyes were really rather red.

“You hung Rock No. 63 over the mantelpiece. Didn’t you?”

Jake turned his head to look at Kevin with a still-rather-watery smile.

“I did, yeah.”

Kevin nodded.

“Jake?”  
  
“Kevin?”  
  
“It works out in the end. More or less. For Odysseus and Penelope, and Telemachus. Unless one counts the _Telegony_. But I don’t.”

Jake grinned up at him.

“The Ancient Greeks had unlicensed spin-off series?”

“ _So many_.”

***

“Kevin?”

“Jake.” 

“I haven’t told anyone this, but there was an actual moment I decided to ask Amy to marry me. She’d just found this typo in a crossword puzzle and I just thought– my whole life. That’s how long I wanted to spend with her.”

Kevin was silent for a moment.

“That’s lovely,” he said eventually.

“I know, right?”

They considered it, lying side by side on the floor.

“Kevin?”

“Jake.”  
  
“Was there an actual moment you decided to marry Captain Holt?”

Kevin turned his head to stare at him. “Is that a serious question?” 

“Of course.” Oh. He really had no idea.

“Jake, I met Raymond in the nineteen eighties. To be gay in New York at the time was, or at least felt... high-risk. I had no idea whether or not I would live into my thirties, let alone a time in which I could be legally married.”

“Oh my God,” said Jake, faintly. “AIDS. I’d forgotten.”

Kevin envied him, in a way. 

“I wanted to marry him anyway,” he admits, matter-of-factly. It's strange to recall it, angry as he is right now. “The probabilities didn't matter. I wanted to, as you said..." The words escape him somehow.

"Spend as much life as you had left with him?” Jake could not possibly be crying again, and yet his eyes were suspiciously bright. Kevin tried to ignore it.

“Quite. I made a complete idiot of myself–”

“I bet _he_ didn’t think that.”

“But I knew,” continued Kevin, “by the time I got off the phone, actually.” 

“ _Seriously?_ ”

“Mm.” Kevin realised, suddenly, that he’d never told anyone that before. Not even Raymond. Raymond probably knew anyway. He was a very good detective. “Of course,” he added, trying for levity, “It didn’t hurt to meet him and discover that he was handsome.”

Jake laughed. He had quite a sweet laugh, Kevin thought. Boyish.

“Is there anyone,” he asked, “in all your fancy old poems or operas or whatever, who has a relationship, like, _anywhere near_ as epic as you guys?”

Kevin considered it.

“Not any of the ones who survived,” he decided, eventually.

“That,” said Jake, “is a _massive downer._ Under the circumstances.”

Kevin had been trying not to think about it. It was so much easier to resent his husband than to contemplate how reasonable his protective paranoia might be.

  
  


***

When Jake ran off to rescue Raymond, Kevin considered his options, all the sensible clever things that Penelope would have done. Then he imagined Jake and Raymond both in danger, so he rammed a warehouse with the car instead.

***

He really is furious about the films.

A week later, though, he receives a little postcard of a ship on a stormy sea that says _to my partner in crime, from ya boy telemachus x_ on the back, and when Raymond stares at it with the most beautiful expression of confusion for ten whole minutes, Kevin thinks privately that perhaps two months of confinement were not _entirely_ wasted.

“Your son,” he tells Raymond, prising the postcard from his hands, “is very weird. And he misapplies Homer.”

And he props it up over the mantelpiece.


End file.
